Why are the Chiefs not trying to get better at WR?

[J-ALL-DAY]

6 minutes ago, Jakuvious said:

So, it's tough to say. These things are never truly 1:1, obviously. I don't think having or not having Hill was terribly restrictive for the 2022 offseason. We had obviously planned on having him, so the money was there for him to play with KC in 2022. And not too much would've had to have changed to accommodate what would've been his 2022 cap hit. I think it's likely you get some mix of either moving on from Orlando Brown sooner, reworking Pat's deal again (I think restructuring that year would've been about $20M in savings), or not doing some of the small to mid-size deals we threw out (guys like Justin Reid, JuJu, MVS, Dunlap.) Had we restructured Mahomes or others, obviously the team would've been better in 2022 with Hill, but you'd have seen more substantial ramifications down the road. Had we swapped Hill for Brown, or Hill for several of those mid-size deals, it's really tough to say what outcome we would've had. Domino effect and all that. Like, maybe the defense would be drastically worse this year if we couldn't have drafted McDuffie, and maybe couldn't afford to sign Justin Reid and someone like Charles Omenihu or Drue Tranquil. You could be going back to 2018 instead, and having the offense fixed but the defense is trash in exchange. Hard to say.

I do think the impact becomes more substantial the further we get from the trade, personally. Last year, maybe you just don't franchise OBJ, and that's sufificient. So you swap Tyreek for OBJ and McDuffie, maybe we don't go for MVS because we don't need to. Not a bad deal there. Hill side might be better depending on who you can find to play LT. But then I'll be honest, I don't know how you retain Chris Jones this past offseason. The way we were stuck with the tag number while he held out, didn't get a decision until the last minute. So either you lose Jones, or you pretty much have to go to a Mahomes restructure there. Didn't have many other options for creating cap space that we didn't already use. So now for 2023 we might be talking Tyreek for at least Jones and McDuffie. And I love Tyreek, but I'll take the latter, there. And then we'll see what this offseason holds, because we're set to be as cap healthy as we have been in a few years now, and that's largely because Hill is off the books, and Jones might be. So maybe it would cost us Sneed or some signing we don't know about yet in 2024. Maybe we forced the issue cap wise to keep Hill and Jones for 2023, and then lose Jones and Sneed in 2024 and then we can't pay Bolton or Creed in 2025. And god forbid Hill slows down by the time that deal is out. So I think the impact rises the further in you go, as there are more moves impacted, you're paying higher cap hits because any deal would've been backloaded, and you potentially pay for cap reshuffling you did previously to make things work to keep him in the first place.

I don't think this is comparable to something like Trey Lance, though. Because Trey Lance just failed. You spent a high pick, got a low pick years later in return. Like, that was wasted capital that could've gone to something else. We'll never know for sure what would've happened if we hadn't traded Tyreek. Maybe we'd have lost in 2022 but we'd win this year instead, while this year we don't look like we have it. Maybe having him lets us stomach Kelce's retirement down the road, or maybe having him means we don't have the money we need for other problems in 2025. You really can't tell. But this isn't a Trey Lance situation where you just drafted a bad player and things worked out anyway. We got stuff in return from moving on from Hill. McDuffie alone means we didn't get nothing for it. Throw in the $20M cap space, and you can at least argue either way. Comparing it to Trey Lance makes it sound like we gave Hill away for nothing, but still won a superbowl, so we're calling it a win. But that's not really the case. We got a star corner and a ton of cap space for it. We got things in return for Hill. Acquiring Lance just cost San Fran resources. If you draft a star player with the 4th rounder you got in return, maybe then there's an analogy there.

I wasn't making an apples to apples comparison to the Lance trade/pick for the Niners but just responding to the post about the Chiefs winning the SB so you can't say that it was a bad trade. 

Thank you though, this is what I was looking for! I guess what's going to suck is if Kelce retires this offseason or the next and then the Chiefs are left without any legit weapon. Then you can say maybe holding on to Hill would have been smart for the future but even that is questionable since it would have led to others not being able to be re-signed or signed in general or drafted.